WordPress WPTouch Pro Now Added

It is now 3 months ago that Lenders4U was launched (27th Dec). Earlier in the week the 100th post was also added. The post count average of 1 per day would ideally be much higher, but in the initial month there was little progress with most of the developments taking place recently. The aim is to keep the momentum going and to continue making improvements as much as possible. Another update to note has been the installation of WPTouch Pro. They offer high quality mobile optimised themes and their product has become one of the most popular WordPress plugins created (and Pro comes at a cost). It was a good idea to get this new plugin connected since Google will soon be running their mobile-friendly algorithm on April 21st. Webmasters that don’t make the necessary adjustments will lose out on rankings for anyone searching on their phones. As far as progress goes, the traffic has started to pick up more, but it could certainly be much better. Hopefully next month will be a big one for our progression.

RE: Google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

A New WordPress Skin for the Blog

The decision was taken to revamp the look of the Lenders4U WordPress Blog. The same WP theme has been used, but a different skin colour has simply been opted for. A few sample screenshots have been provided below showing the old and updated look. The original style was blue with the background being white. I liked the blue surrounding finish and within the comparison sections the white layout suited the company logos that were mostly the same colour themselves. Whilst blending worked well here it was difficult to read the text. Perhaps the sitewide fonts could have been updated, but I thought that it would be a better idea to just start experimenting.

After some trial and error it was the purple skin that was selected. It was either going to be this or black that itself looked good. With both of these colours the text had better visibility, but purple just edged it out in the end. I think the “Cadbury” look just gives off a more vibrant and effective appearance. Due to this change, a fresh logo had to be created and some widgets were tidied up. All of the discussed updates took a long time, but the results I feel were worth it. Here are some before and after screenshots. This includes a header shot and a small area of one of the comparison pages.

About Lenders4U

We have setup this WordPress blog to run frequent updates on the progress of www.lenders4u.co.uk. We are a great fan of WordPress and in fact built Lenders4U on the WordPress.org platform. This is a new project that is just coming up to the age of 3 months old. Our aim is to develop a valuable price comparison service focussed on subprime lending in the UK. By subprime, we are referring to loan companies that lend to those who find it difficult to receive funding, usually due to past credit problems. They offer solutions when the banks say no.

Our early approach has been to profile any such lender and after this they will be quickly added to a comparison page where they will be ranked alongside their competitors on pricing and other features. We are also posting more specific financial content with the aim of covering as much of the market as we can. There is a wide selection of review websites that do a similar thing to what we are planning to do, but the difference with them is that they usually focus on collecting leads through affiliate programs. We feel that this shows bias and we want to provide impartial information.

At least this way the user can view product specs and decide themselves whether they should choose any single company over another. To stand out from the crowd the goal is very much to build the website as comprehensively as we can. This means providing plenty of detailed information and statistics that should help to distinguish us. In the initial 3 months the focus has been directed at developing new content and so we haven’t expected too much when it comes to web traffic. Our progress in the manner of hits is expected to pick up, but we understand that it will take time to grow.

When you are building for the long term we feel that it is important to be patient, but to importantly make sure that the right approach is taken and that improvements are being made on a daily basis. Through this blog we will be posting frequent updates to show how we are progressing and we will also be reporting on the industry as a whole. It has been a drastic start to the year since the industry regulator (the FCA) unleashed price capping on payday products (at 0.8% daily). This has pushed many companies into closure whilst others have had to adapt.